French Third Republic

The French Third Republic was the republican government of France that ruled from 4 September 1870 to 10 July 1940, with Paris serving as its capital. The republic was established after the downfall of Napoleon III's Second French Empire during the Franco-Prussian War, and it lasted until the German occupation of France during World War II.

Franco-Prussian War
At the Battle of Sedan on 2 September 1870, during the Franco-Prussian War, the Germans captured Emperor Napoleon III. In Paris, radicals proclaimed the creation of the Third Republic. The Radicals dominated Paris and other major cities, while the provinces were more conservative. In February 1871, monarchist candidates won a majority of seats in the new National Assembly. The Third Republic also confronted a threat from radicals in Paris. On 17 March 1871, Adolphe Thiers, the head of government, ordered the dissolution of the National Guard. The radicals responded by electing a new city government, the Paris Commune. Thiers decided to crush the Paris Commune. On 8 May, the army began a bombardment of Paris, and, on 21 May, troops entered the city. During the following week, the army reestablished the government's control over the capital, killing around 20,000 people in the process.

Foundation of the Republic
An attempt to restore the monarchy failed as a result of the rivalry between the Bourbon Legitimist and Orleanist claimants to the throne, and in 1875 the constitutional laws for the Third Republic were adopted. These laws established a weak government, with authority centered in parliament. The parliament consisted of two houses, the Chamber of Deputies, elected by universal manhood suffrage, and the indirectly elected Senate. The executive functions of government were exercised by the cabinet, headed by a premier and responsible to the parliament. The president of the republic, elected by both houses of parliament for a term of seven years, had relatively little power. Their history since 1789 had taught the French that a strong executive was likely to establish his arbitrary authority. The government's effectiveness was further weakened by the multi-party ststem. Since no one party could command a majority in parliament, coalition cabinets were necessary. These coalitions often proved fragile as a result of disagreements among the parties and their leaders.

Right-wing threats
The Catholic Church had generally supported the monarchist cause, and during the 1880s, the republican leaders promoted an anticlerical campaign, designed to reduce the church's influence in national life. The government established a system of free secular elementary schools to compete with schools controlled by the church. The Jesuits were expelled from France, and the name of God was removed from oaths.

In the late 1880s, the republic's survival was threatened by the emergence of General Georges Boulanger. A popular minister of war, Boulanger benefited from revelations of financial scandals involving a number of prominent republican politicians. In 1889, it appeared that Boulanger might attempt to carry out a coup d'etat with monarchist and clerical support. He failed to do so, however, and instead fled the country. The Boulanger Affair discredited the monarchists and thus served to strengthen the republic.

Dreyfus Affair
For several years around the turn of the century, France was torn apart by the Dreyfus Affair. In December 1894, an army court-martial convicted Captain Alfred Dreyfus, a Jewish officer, of conveying secret information to the Germans, and he was sentenced to imprisonment in the penal colony of Devil's Island in French Guiana. Some doubts remained about Dreyfus' guilt, however. In early 1896, Colonel Georges Picquart, the new head of the French intelligence service, developed evidence indicating that Major Ferdinand Esterhazy was the guilty party, although he was promptly acquitted by a court-martial. It was also revealed that certain key documents used by the prosecution against Dreyfus had been forged. A bitter conflict developed. At one level, the issue involved the question of Dreyfus' guilt or innocence. On another level, it was a conflict between the Dreyfusards, who supported both Dreyfus' innocence and the cause of the republic and anticlericalism, and the anti-Dreyfusards, who insisted on Dreyfus' guilt and supported the cause of the monarchists, the army, and the Catholic Church. The anti-Dreyfusards were often openly anti-Semitic.

In 1898, the novelist Emile Zola, a Dreyfusard, published a newspaper article entitled J'Accuse ("I Accuse). Zola charged the army with forging the evidence that convicted Dreyfus and with deliberately suppressing evidence that would vindicate him. A new court-martial found Dreyfus guilty once again, although this time with extenuating circumstances. The French president pardoned Dreyfus and, in 1906, the French supreme court invalidated the convictions handed down by the two courts-martial.

The victory of the Dreyfusards was a decisive defeat for the ultraconservative officers who dominated the French Army and for the monarchists and the church, as well. The government now renewed its anticlerical campaign, adopting laws to exclude members of Catholic religious orders from teaching. In 1905, the government abrogated Napoleon's Concordat of 1801. Church and state were now separated.

Leadup to World War I
Focusing their attention on the struggle against the monarchists and on the anticlerical campaign, the French republicans showed relatively little interest in the problems of the country's worers. In 1905, several socialist groups joined under the leadership of Jean Jaures and Jules Guesde to form the SFIO, which sought to represent the interests of the workers.

The French Third Republic formed the Triple Entente with the United Kingdom and the Russian Empire on 31 August 1907, and the Entente powers (also known as the Allies) fought against the German-led Central Powers in World War I from 1914 to 1918. Northern France was ravaged by the war, with the Entente and German forces digging trenches and engaging in bloody trench warfare.

Interwar politics
For France, World War I had been a devastating experience. Of the 8,000,000 men mobilized, 1,400,000 had been killed, while over 3,000,000 more had been wounded. France had also suffered immense physical destruction. For almost four years, northern France had been a battlefield. Hundreds of cities and towns had suffered severe damage, and factories, mines, and farmland had been devastated. The cost of reconstruction was immense. The election for the Chamber of Deputies in November 1919 resulted in a victory for a coalition of centrist and rightist parties, the National Bloc, which dominated the French government until 1924. Aristide Briand and Raymond Poincare were the leading figures in the government. The National Bloc pursued a hard line toward Germany. When Germany defaulted on its reparations payments in 1922, France occupied the Ruhr.On the left, the major event in the early 1920s was the split in the SFIO, which occurred in 1920. Left-wing socialists formed the French Communist Party, which became increasingly subordinate to control from Moscow. The reorganized SFIO supported moderate, reformist policies.

In May 1924, a coalition of Socialists and Radicals, the Left Cartel, won the election for the Chamber of Deputies. Edouard Herriot, a leader of the Radical Party of France, became premier. While tension with Germany eased, the Left Cartel proved as incapable as the National Bloc had been in coping with the problems of inflation, the national debt, and the unbalanced budget. The Left Cartel was troubled, in particular, by deep disagreements between Socialists and the Radicals. The Socialists favored a tax on capital owned by the wealthy, increases in direct taxes, and lower interest rates on government bonds. Despite their names, the Radicals were relatively conservative on economic questions. They advocated budget cuts and modest increases in indirect taxes in an effort to cope with teh government's financial problems. As the deadlock between the Socialists and Radicals continued, inflation became more serious. Cabinet instability was worse than usual, and from April 1925 to June 1926, there were six cabinets.

Great Depression
In an effort to restore some semblance of order to French politics and finances, the parliament granted extraordinary powers to a National Union ministry headed by Poincare, who took office in 1926. Poincare, who had a reputation for financial expertise, won the support of the Radicals and the centrist and rightist parties for his program of cutting government spending and increasing taxes. During the late 1920s, the French economy experienced a substantial recovery. There was a high level of employment, and the reconstruction of the war-devastated areas of the country was completed. However, subsequent events revealed that the recovery was only temporary.

Poincare's conservative successors governed France from 1929 to 1932. Without Poincare's firm leadership, however, cabinet instability returned. This instability resulted from the multiparty system and the lack of discipline within parties. As the Great Depression began to engulf the world, France appeared at first to be immune. The French economy possessed a good balance between industry and agriculture and did not feel an immediate impact from the economic downturn. By 1932, however, France was hit hard by the Depression.

The Left Cartel, the Radical and Socialist coalition, won a majority of seats in the Chamber of Deputies in the May 1932 election. Once again, as following the leftist victory in 1924, the Radical Herriot became premier. Having cooperated in order to win the election, the Radicals and Socialists continued to find it difficult to agree on policy. This discord led to continuing cabinet instability. From December 1932 to February 1934, five weak cabinets, all headed by Radicals, attempted to govern the country.

Stavisky Scandal
In early 1934, scandal rocked the French political world. Serge Stavisky, who had cheated investors out of millions of francs, had allegedly been protected by a number of politicians, including a number of leading Radicals. Whether Stavisky committed suicide in order to avoid arrest or was murdered to prevent him from revealing his political connections has never been determined. In protest against the corruption and ineffectiveness of the Third Republic, ultra-right-wing political groups organized a great demonstration in Paris on 6 February 1934. The demonstration quickly turned into a riot when the demonstrators attemted to storm the Chamber of Deputies building. In the wake of the Stavisky scandal, the Left Cartel collapsed and the parliament established a National Union ministry headed by Gaston Doumergue, a former president. The Doumergue cabinet was in power for most of 1934 and provided French political life with a degree of much-needed respectability.The National U nion ministry did little, however, to cope with the intensifying economic crisis.

Left Cartel becomes Popular Front
During 1935, Pierre Laval was the dominant figure in the French government, serving as premier from May to January 1936. The depression reached its lowest point, with total industrial production well below the 1913 level. Laval cut government expenditures and maintained the gold standard. While the index of industrial production showed a modest increase, other economic indicators to failed to improve.

The Popular Front, a coalition of Radicals, Socialists, and Communists, won a majority in the Chamber of Deputies in the May 1936 election. Although the Communists declined to take seats in the cabinet, they agreed to support the program of the Popular Front government headed by the Socialist leader, Leon Blum. The Popular Front carried out a number of reforms. Labor unions won the right to collective bargaining, and wages were increased by about 12%. The 40-hour workweek and paid vacations for workers were established. Compulsory arbitration of labor management disputes was instituted. The Bank of France was nationalized, as was some of the armaments industry. Conflict between the Socialists and Radicals continued, however, and the Popular Front failed to produce any real solution to France's basic economic problems. In June 1937, Blum resigned. The Popular Front survived for another year until it fell apart in the spring in 1938.

Last years of peace
When the Popular Front government was established, a great sense of hope had come to the workers of France, while conservatives had stood in fear of a revolution. Nothing happened to justify either the hopes or fears. In the long run, the failure of the Popular Front benefited the Communists, since it seemed to prove what they had been insisting: the only way to bring real change in France was to begin with a revolution that would completely shake up the country's economic and social sttructure. This attitude contributed to the emergence of a powerful Communist Party in France following World War II. In April 1938, the Radical Edouard Daladier became premier, heading a coalition of the Radicals with the centrist parties. Like Neville Chamberlain in Great Britain, Daladier had to focus his attention on the deteriorating international situation.

Downfall
In 1939, France allied with Poland and Britain against Nazi Germany in response to Germany's aggression during the Interwar period, leading to World War II. France was occupied by the Germans in June 1940, and the Germans established the "Vichy France" puppet regime, with Philippe Petain serving as its leader. After the war's end in 1945, the French Fourth Republic was established.